Hearts of London was created in 2012 when its founder identified a gap in the market for custom-built diamond jewellery. It designs and manufactures made-to-order pieces, specialising in diamond engagement and wedding rings, using only independently certified diamonds from the GIA.
Hearts of London operated predominantly by appointment, as well as benefiting from passing footfall at their jewellery showroom in Hatton Garden.
The old website had been used as lead generation for customers to learn about the business and book appointments, but it was not transactional. Hearts of London came to Eastside Co to migrate the site to Shopify and create an online presence that would allow them to enter the ecommerce market and sell their custom jewellery online.
At the heart of our approach was a custom integration, built with Rapnet (an international diamond directory), to create a live feed of thousands of diamonds from hundreds of suppliers. Updated hourly, the feed syncs with the Hearts of London website to pull through every available size, colour, clarity, carat and cut of diamond based on selection criteria. The diamond search was integrated with the product pages in order to calculate the total price.
The challenge for our design, front-end and back-end development team was to take the huge amount of information from the directory and convey it to the customers through a UX-focused journey to enable them to create their bespoke jewellery.
The end result was a clear and intuitive selection process for customers to choose the style, setting and stone in order to create their own diamond engagement rings in 3 simple steps.
We also created a consultation scheduler, which allows customers to make appointments to meet with the design experts and gemmologists to design their ring.
Trust in your jeweller is imperative when making a high-end purchase like an engagement or wedding ring, particularly online. We ensured the website conveyed Hearts of London’s knowledge, expertise and high service levels - demonstrating their understanding of diamonds to showcase an honest, transparent jewellers.
Social proof such as utilising Trustpilot as a verified third party review platform, displaying customer reviews and stories, an in-depth ‘About Us’ section and company history, plus a Live Chat functionality all help reassure and encourage customers to make a purchase.
